INTRODUCTION TO THE FIRST EDITION
By
"M.B."
Well-known Apocalypse Expert

Since my retirement from public life thirty-five years ago, I have awaited with impatience the publication of a work grounded upon that foundation established by myself, my Associates, and our Illustrious Founder.

I feel privileged to announce that the seeds which first we sowed in Nineteen Forty-five have at long last borne fruit. And, appropriately enough, in the United States of America. I refer, of course to this: the first edition of The Best of The Whole Death Catalog.

I first chanced to read The Whole Death Catalog -- in its weekly newsletter form--in early Nineteen Seventy-nine. At that time, seventy-five per cent of my capital was secured in gold and gold shares (the other twenty-five per cent being invested in collectibles acquired while on Active Duty during The War) and I had noted with satisfaction the spectacular rise in the price of that metal as reported in The Western Financial Press. Naturally enough, I felt a deep interest in what The Press had to say about the future of my holdings.

While browsing through Barron's one weekend afternoon, I noticed an advertisement promoting one of the so-called "Gold Bug" newsletters. This advertisement offered to send me a package containing its own publication plus twenty-four competing periodicals, in the fullest confidence that upon examination I would find its product superior. Twenty-five newsletters for only nineteen dollars, ninety-five cents, U.S.: a not inconsiderable bargain for an elderly retiree living on a fixed income. I filled out and mailed the Barron's coupon immediately.

By the time my package arrived, the London fixing of gold had exceeded eight hundred dollars an ounce. Should I hold, I wondered, and look to one thousand dollars an ounce? Or should I sell and place the proceeds in one of the new, American Money Market Funds? My hands trembled as I tore open the package. I had not been so excited since our Ardennes Winter Offensive.

It shames me to confess that I -- I who worked hand in hand with our own dear Doctor, The Twentieth Century's Master of Media Deception-- had been duped by the American Madison Avenue. The publications were hopeless pap. Here was a weekly predicting that within days the price of gold would rise to three thousand dollars an ounce; here was another foreseeing a fall to one hundred dollars and touting partly-frozen broiler futures! One journal painted grim pictures of a world-wide monetary deflation, while another predicted, and professed to understand an inflat1on more terrible than ours in the Twenties.

This shoddy rag howled that The American Dow Jones Average would plummet; that slick monthly claimed it would rise; another announced it would do both. I had expected predictive science, and I heard the senseless jabbering of fools!

On only one point were the journals in agreement: all foresaw a terrible turmoil in the Western Economic System. With this I could certainly concur, but did they any understanding of the depth of the crisis facing our world? I read on hopefully-

Again, I was cruelly disappointed. Imagine, if you can, a so-called "economist" who recommends buying gold coins as a "hedge" against the Collapse of World Civilization! (Editor's Note: see TWDC, II, 381 "Nutritional Qualities of The Kruegerrand.") Contemplate, if you will, the criminal inanition of an editor who suggests laying by a one-year supply of dehydrated Noodles Romanoff against a Millennium of Barbarism, Famine. Pestilence, and Civil War! Consider, for one moment, the hardheaded sagacity of a so-called "survival expert" who tells you that an automatic pistol will save your home and loved ones from a horde of famine-crazed refugees fifty-thousand strong; from a human wave of screaming barbarians, or from a dozen squadrons of jet black longships manned by savage, axe-hurling Sea Raiders determined to make your beach-front condominium their own!

In the old days, we knew how to handle these "experts":  As one who has seen, with his own eyes, The Red Army "liberating" my nation's capital, as one who has seen, and survived, the very best that The Twentieth Century has thus far offered, I believe I can truthfully claim to be expert in the Causes and Nature of Apocalypse. For this reason I must recommend, alone among crisis-directed publications, The Whole Death Catalog. The Whole Death Catalog is the only publication now in existence with a comprehensive and accurate understanding of Mankind's Nature and Mankind's Future. It is the only journal now in print that offers practical advice to those concerned for the survival and prosperity of themselves and their heirs in the Thousand Years of Darkness soon to be upon us.

I can particularly recommend The Whole Death Catalog's special Telephone Service for those who, willing to spend a little extra, wish to be informed immediately of developments in the area of Apocalyptic Affairs.

For those of you unfamiliar with The Whole Death Catalog's weekly editions, this first volume of The Best of the Whole Death Catalog represents a splendid opportunity to catch up, at minimal expense, on the latest thinking about the impending obliteration of civilization.